


Be Brave, be true, save the Empire.

by Cuits



Category: Mulan (1998)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, F/M, Genderfluid Character, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-09-22 05:19:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17053889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cuits/pseuds/Cuits
Summary: Mulan never thought she would fit in.Shang never thought he would marry.As it turns out, they were both wrong.





	Be Brave, be true, save the Empire.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nerakrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerakrose/gifts).



There is an almond tree in the garden of her father’s house. It is in the far south end and accommodated on its lower branches, she can see the rest of the garden and the main entrance to the estate. That and the warm sun that bathes the area no matter the season, are the reasons that make of that place Mulan’s favourite spot to hide and play since she is able to remember.

Mulan is seven years old and and playing around the base of the almond tree the last time her mother will miscarriage.

It is barely spring and the almond tree is starting to shyly blossom with little white flowers that look like a bunch of snowflakes grouped together and Mulan braces the branch she is on so hard that it scratches the soft skin of her cheek. She observes as the servants move frantically around the patio until the doctor comes in and then everything stills; there is a sudden unnatural silence that falls upon the Fa Estate like an unwelcome thick blanket in a summer night, and if she was scared before, now she is downright terrified of what might be going on inside the house.

The grey morning slowly turns into an unpleasant afternoon, but Mulan still doesn’t get off the tree, still doesn’t give up on the apparent security of the branches holding her. It’s not until the evening starts welcoming a surely cold night that Grandma comes looking for her.

“There you are,” she says with a lantern on her hand, “why don’t come down and you and I have some tea before supper is served.”

Mulan is not in the mood for tea, but her feet are as cold as metal in the winter and Grandma doesn’t seems to be angry about her skipping lunch. Resigned, Mulan starts her descend to the ground and tries not to notice the dark circles under the older woman’s eyes and the melancholic sadness of her features when she looks at her.

“Aren’t Mother and Father taking tea with us?” She asks taking the warm hand her grandmother offers.

“Not tonight.”

She is far too young to find out what is happening and far too smart to know when not to ask uncomfortable questions but she can feel it deep in her bones: the unyielding setting of change, something not being how it was supposed to be, destiny taking an obscure and uncertain turn.

Mulan and Grandma take tea alone that night, and the night after that one too. They take tea alone and eat alone for many days and nights to come, and Mulan keeps on being too young, too smart and too scared to ask why her parents hide away in their own rooms, undisturbed, all day and night long.

"Oh my little Mulan," says Grandma one day while she practices calligraphy. "You have to promise me you will learn to be strong. Life is too hard to endure for those who aren't strong enough."

She frowns and carefully not to irremediably stain anything, leaves her brush to rest and stands tall before her grandmother; her spine as straight as an arrow, hands on her hips and chest as full of air as if it were a balloon, so that the old woman can appreciate the magnificent strength of her seven year old figure.

"I am strong, Grandmother,” she says convinced, “and when I grow up I will be as strong as Father is," she ventures vehemently.

Grandma’s eyes shine watery as she softly takes her chin with her calloused hand and makes her look into those ancient, wise eyes of her.

"You will have to learn to be stronger than your father, Mulan."

Mulan isn’t sure she can be that strong. She has seen Father break terracotta bricks with his bare hands while training, bricks that she can barely lift, but she is most certain that this is not the time to disappoint her grandmother.

“Yes, I will be, “ she says. _Yes I will try_ , she thinks.

After that day it doesn’t take long for her father to start joining them for meals again, and as the almond tree starts to lose its precious white petaled flowers, he starts to take the time to be with Mulan again. It seems to be an extenuating and delicate process but he relieves Grandma of her tutoring chores and takes the responsibility of supervising Mulan’s diligent acquiring of accomplishments as it is expected of a girl of her social stature.

“Come by my side, Mulan” he says one rainy afternoon, “I want you to watch as I register the family expenses in the book.”

Mulan’s breath catches in her little lungs, her bright, dark eyes shining with excitement and realization. She is a month short of her eighth name day and t’is the first time she realizes she will never have a brother that will inherit her father’s responsibilities.

* * *

 

 

Li Shang is the second son of a first wife, and among society, that is not an unflattering position. It grants him certain privilege and quite an amount of respect.

"Your brother will inherit your father's estate but you still have your father’s family name, Shang, and you will have a use for it in the army," says her mother when he is barely ten years old.

This planned future of his might be imposed, but it's certainly not an unwelcome one. He is still very young, but not young enough not to understand the plotting and scheming of the women living under his father’s roof, always in constant pursuit of his father’s favor, always aiming to gain more power within the Li state. Every cry, every smile, every word chosen with careful calculation as a mean to an end.

He detest it. He hates the false displays of regard. The fake, flattering words get under his skin day after day, and this loathe and contempt grow and take shelter within himself. They squeeze his lungs with increasing intensity with every passing year until he feels like he can’t breathe anymore.

“Are you sure of this path you want to follow?” his father asks him one evening when he is already fifteen.

They sit by each other, near the pond and under a the dark sky. They both look at the vibrant lights and the passing silhouettes of the big house.

He doesn’t have to think much before giving his father an answer. “Yes, father,” he says truthfully.

“You will spend your first years as a young man surrounded by men and without many commodities that you enjoy now.”

Shang looks at the house and remembers the angry words between his sisters, always fighting a restless, veiled war. The bitter looks among the older women whenever his father is not looking in a certain direction, and Shang can’t think of many things he will be missing when he is gone. Neither his five half-sisters nor his father’s wives have ever been anything more than barely civil to him, and his mother has long since lost herself in the battle against the newest wife to care about anything but her own misery. No, he has lived among women all his life and he thinks he has had enough of that. He will not miss their cruelty and falsity, he will not miss the unfeeling calculations that govern their lives.

Shang puts a fist inside the other and bows towards his father. “I will be honored to join the Emperor’s Army.”

His father nods solemnly. “Then it is settled,” he says, and they don’t talk about the matter again.

Li Shang leaves his father’s estate and everything he has known all his life at the age of seventeen to earn a life among the elite of China’s army. He carries with himself little luggage and a lump in his throat caused not by nostalgia, but by the anxiety at the unknown that lays ahead.

He must prove himself worthy to the Empire. He must prove himself a worthy son to his father.

His mother and his half-sisters cry at his departure with theatrical tears that he can no longer distinguish from those of real despair. As their figures become blurry spots on the distant landscape until they finally disappear from his line of vision forever, Shang feels, for the first time, like he can really be himself.

* * *

 

 

The day of Mulan’s eighteenth birthday she wakes up and looks at her reflection in the mirror.

The girl that looks back at her isn’t too pretty or too accomplished, but is smart enough to know that she has been postponing her meeting with the matchmaker for far too long.

She can’t shield herself behind her young age anymore and she knows that if she waits too long, no respectable young man would want to marry the old maid that society says she’ll have become.

She can’t take that risk, the risk of not bringing honor to her family.

She tries to improve at the things that are supposed to be a reflection of her value: her posture, her calligraphy, the way she serves tea; but she seems to be too impatient to appear demure, too avid for other things to look complacent. The thought that she could fail crushes her soul so strongly that she never stops, her brain always occupied with a million different things that won’t allow her to wallow in self-pity or self-doubt. On stormy nights, when she can’t shake the fear of not being adequate enough, she breathes deeply, inhaling the electric, humid air and convinces herself that surely someone that exists in this world would appreciate what she has to offer.

She is a good horsewoman, she is efficient and inventive, great at math and economy, she doesn’t usually lose at mahjong or backgammon, and the modest family library has provided her with enough knowledge not to fall short in conversation. All this could be enough, right? It _should_ be enough to secure and honorable husband, right?

Her mother never loses her patience as she tries to improve her proper education, but every time she spills the tea, Mulan can see in the flick in her features, how her mother wishes for things that are not the way they are. Maybe that she had had another child, maybe that Mulan had been a boy, or perhaps simply that she would have started with this kind of education earlier in life, when Mulan was still a child, bendable and _teachable_.

Sometimes Mulan wishes for all those things too.

“Don’t worry, my child,” says her grandmother, the deep, beautiful wrinkles of her face softening as she smiles. “You are brave and you are capable.” Her hand is warm and soft as she caresses her cheek. “Life keeps secret treasures for people like you.”

Grandma always makes her feel better with her words, appeases her fears with a trust in Mulan that nobody else seems to hold, not even herself.

“Do you think the Matchmaker will find me suitable?”

The old woman cringes and looks elsewhere, as she does when someone speaks silly impertinences in her presence or when she struggles to find the right words to express her truthful opinion without uttering offense.

“It only matters if she is in the way of your only path. Destiny rarely lays just one option at our feet, little Mulan.”

Mulan is well-read enough to know there are choices ahead of her, that there are always choices to make, but not all of those are moral and not all of those are right. She won’t choose for herself, she is all the Fa family has.

“I want to bring honor to this family.” Her conviction has never faltered.

“Then, I’m sure you will,” Grandma says, caressing the skin behind her ear.

* * *

 

 

Shang is nineteen when his father decides that enough is enough. He goes into his tent as night starts to fall and orders him to get dressed. An army is only as strong as its weakest regiment and Shang’s regiment, when he gets one, won't be that regiment.

“Your orders will have to be executed without hesitation,” his father explains as he hushes him to the horses. “And that requires respect, son,” his voice is commanding and inflexible as they take the road to the village. “One man cannot be a joke among soldiers and a respected commander at the same time.”

Shang listens to his father’s words carefully and only cringes when the shadows hide his face completely. He knows where the road they take leads to. Shang is hardly surprised when her father stops abruptly the trot of his horse and dismounts in front of an isolated house adorned with very bright red lanterns.

“This is my son,” her father says to the woman that greets them at the door, looking far more respectable than Shang expected. “Treat him as such.”

The woman smiles demurely and nods as Shang tries not to think about the words of his father, about their meaning or what kind of weight they could have in an establishment such as this one.

“We will take care of him,” the woman says as she pushes him inside lightly.

“Don’t be gentle with him.”

Those are the last words Shang hears before everything shifts.

There is music, and women with as few clothes on as he has ever seen. The fumes of opium thicken the air and the raw smell of alcohol emanates from men that laugh too hard and too loud, and give away money as dancers slowly move around them. Some of these men, he recognizes as fellow soldiers from his own regiment.

“This is not for you. Come, come with me.”

He feels sick but he knows his father will be waiting outside and that, as in every other aspect of life, he will be waiting for a report of performance. Shang holds the air in his lungs and follows the woman with his head held high and strong steps.

He walks as he imagines he would walk to his own demise; without any kind of eagerness but not faltering either.

The woman takes him to a room where a couple of young women with heavy make-up and heavy perfumes wait for him. They both wear hanfus with complicated embroidery that look expensive but their sleeves are too short for decorum, and they are barely tied so they open every time the women move letting him see their pale, naked legs.

It stirs his body so he looks at the ceiling of the room as the women get nearer and start to undress him.

The place is well lit, with pale yellow and red lanterns that paint shadows in the women’s bodies, flattering their curves. The bed is richly dressed with silks and soft cushions that caress his skin as the women touch him expertly in ways he has never been touched before. He has barely even _imagined_ being touched like this before.

It is a very specific kind of torture, that his body reacts to what is being done, that it elicits pleasure while his mind is so disgusted with the situation. The conflict so violent within himself that he closes his eyes hard as one of the women mounts him and the other one licks his skin everywhere.

He grabs handfuls of silk, clenching his hands as the women _seduce_ him. He can hear their giggles and faked moans that do nothing but anger him. He hates this kind of dishonesty, the attempt to subtly manipulate his feelings.

When some time later he walks out of the house his father is waiting for him. He doesn’t smile but there is a satisfied gleam in his eyes, as if Shang had accomplished something tonight other than giving away his sense of morality and self-respect for the better part of an hour.

There might be something in the serious stance of Shang that gives him away because his father pats him in the shoulder. “Sacrifices are to be made on the way to success,” he says.

Shang nods and mounts his horse.

He will never visit this place again.

* * *

 

 

Mulan is way too tired and way too sad on her twentieth name day to even try to celebrate it in any way. Yet, Mushu produces a little peach dumpling out of Gods-know-where and he and Cricket attempt to cheer her up by giving her a red egg.

She carefully undoes her hair bun, letting her hair fall to her shoulders, and gets into bed earlier than usual, although she finds it difficult to sleep. It’s even more difficult not to cry.

Every single muscle of her body hurts due to the continued exercise. Day after day, after day, after day, after day.

It’s not enough.

She can’t run fast enough, climb high enough or hold enough weight, and she is not skilled enough in martial arts to compensate for all her other shortages.

She can’t fail, but that is the only thing that she has achieved so far.

Mulan burned all her bridges when she ran away from her home with her father’s sword. She knows she could never go back empty handed and humiliated after what happened with the Matchmaker. She couldn’t do that to her family, she’d rather never see them again than make them endure her disgrace.

“Tomorrow will be better. You’ll see,” says Mushu as he brushes her hair carefully with his little claws.

She cries herself to sleep, silently, so as not to raise any suspicious.

She gets up the next day with puffy eyes that she is afraid will tell of her dismay, but nobody really pays attention to her. It is a sad relief.

Her days pass slowly as she exhausts herself over and over again to no avail. If she were to disappear into thin air, her fellow recruits would only miss her when looking for someone who did worse than the slowest, weakest of them. Cricket and Mushu’s encouragements are almost the only thing that keeps her from falling apart.

“You will bring honor to the family,” Mushu says with more tender care than conviction. He is taking care of one of her nastiest bruises and Mulan is too devastated to argue with him anymore. “Grandma said it,” he insists, “and she is never wrong.”

“She also said that I was going to find a husband.”

“Ah, but she didn’t say when.”

Cricket chipperly agrees and Mulan smiles a little if only for them.

Somehow, after that week and after the week after that one, she stops crying. Maybe she just runs out of tears.

“No, Ping! You’ll never be stronger than Chien-Po! Stop trying to fight like an ox!”

The disappointment in the eyes of the Captain is hard to swallow, so she tries, and tries again. And fails, and fails again.

She is left alone to clean up after practice. The sun is getting low and she decides to take a moment to appreciate the colours of the sky, the same sky she used to see from her almond tree. She sits on a path of green grass with her legs crossed and her back straight. Her whole body hurts, but less than it did a couple of weeks ago, and she tries to find a little comfort in that.

She hears him approaching but doesn’t dare look up to him, doesn’t dare to move. She keeps her eyes fixed on the colorful clouds in the sky and hopes that that won’t be yet another way to let him down.

He sits beside her with a swift movement and Mulan forgets to breathe for the next two seconds.

“Why are you here, Ping?”

His voice is soft, as if to not disturb the sunset, and she would do the inimaginable to keep hearing that tone when he talks to her.

“I was the last one to complete the trail, Captain. I am to clean the training field.”

“No, Ping. I meant, why are you at the camp?” She looks at him a little aggravated but he is looking at the sky. “Your father clearly didn’t raise you to fight.”

No, he didn’t, but he raised her to be of use. She makes fists of her hands and determination sets on her features. “I came to bring honor to my family,” she says truthfully.

“You will die trying.”

The conviction of his words is like a sudden sharp pain under her lungs. She wonders if her father will be looking at the same sky, watching the same pink clouds slowly drift away. Will he forgive her after her death or will he deny her existence and erase her from his memories?

No. Her father will forgive her. She knows that as she knows the colours of the sky.

“So be it,”she says, accepting her demise if that is what the future holds for her. “Honor doesn’t end or begin with death.”

The Captain puts a hand on her shoulder. It is warm and heavy and Mulan feels like that hand could anchor the whole army, lead the regiment to victory without trembling.

“You are not a soldier, Ping. But you are not a coward either.”

There is something akin to pride in his voice. Mulan is lucky she has already run out of tears.

Another ten days go by, then twenty. Her muscles begin to effectively gain mass and the constant training finally starts to pay off. She becomes swiffer, more agile, skilled at using her smaller frame as an advantage.

It’s not quite enough, though. Not yet. But she listens and learns, until she comprehends that she will never succeed if she only focuses on being what she is not.

Turns out it is her ingenious mind what allows her to remain at camp, and she had that with her all along, so she gains confidence. After four months of non-stop training she feels stronger, empowered. She walks and moves with easiness among men, forgets to be worried about being discovered all the time, and Mushu and Cricket help her develop an effective system to keep her superior personal hygiene without having to bath in company.

She stops being a loner, a loser. Manages to make friends that think that she is a weird guy but in a funny kind of way, and that get used to her unique way of approaching things.

Some days, just before sunset, Captain Shang calls her to his tent. He serves them both some baijiu that Mulan tries not to drink, spilling the liquor here and there in small quantities, and tries very hard not to think that she is alone with a man, in a tent, as outside is getting dark.

They mostly play mahjong in silence, concentrating on their respective plays, which leaves Mulan time and opportunity to pay attention to everything but the game. If she is expected to pass as a man for long she will have to refine the way she moves in gatherings of a more social nature, learn the things that usually belong in a man’s tent, be able to reproduce the relaxed speaking pattern.

Shang concentrates hard for a couple of minutes before groaning in what Mulan is sure is an exaggerated way. “I am going to lose again.”

“Yes.”

He empties his glass in one gulp and slumps his shoulders. “I am your Captain, you could let me win. Once.”

She smiles, brash and obvious, like most men do. She has only drunk half a glass of baijiu but she is unused to alcohol and her cheeks feel warm, her face prone to smiling foolishly without proper motive.

“There would be no honor in such a victory.”

“But it would be a victory nevertheless, and that is of importance, Ping.”

She knows he is joking but ever since her fellow soldiers started to talk to her she found out that expectations are very different things for men and women. Men are used to winning, to taking, whereas women are taught to give, she has come to understand.

“If you want to win, Captain, you are going to have to beat me.”

Her chin is up defiantly when Captain Shang starts to laugh, loud and a little obnoxious. He gets up and pats her on the back. She tries not to knock her glass at the force of the impact.

“If you so blatantly ask for a beating you will die long before we encounter battle,” he says with condescending petulancy.

Mulan makes a mental note to always think twice before speaking out her words in front of him.

* * *

 

 

Despite being twenty three, Shang has but barely a distant notion of friendship. His father’s acquaintances have all been poor examples of selflessness or generosity, and his own experiences has been limited to those early days when he joined the army and all his mates had yet to find out who his father was.

Shang has always been judged as a far too straight arrow by his fellow peers and by the time he made it to Captain, he has long given up trying to fit in outside the confined hierarchy and structure of the army.

Friendship, as Shang as come to understand, is for the kindred spirits, and therefore he has deemed it as out of his grasp.

Once every two weeks, Shang gives leave for half the day to the regiment, not because they have reached the goals the has set for them but because he knows that the low spirited are reluctant to accomplish hard work, and his regiment is in dire need of even harder work. His men wait for this half a day of no training and no-camp duties as if it was rain in the desert, and when it comes, they all fleet the premisses and disappear down the valley with a velocity and enthusiasm that they sorely lack in combat training.

He walks among the empty tents and allows himself to relax the hard line of his shoulders a little. The silence is not exactly comforting but it is not unwelcome either, and when he makes it to the side of the river he is only a little surprised to find little Ping there, seated on the grass and throwing flat stones to the water. He seems to be the only other one that never leaves camp either.

He stops five feets away and crooks his head, considering if he should turn around and go, leave him to himself given that he is obviously not seeking company.

“You are not as stealthy as you think you are,” Ping says without turning around, and throws another flat stone to the river.

“I wasn’t trying to be.” Shang shortens the distance between them but remains a prudential couple of feet away, his stance stable and secured to the ground. “And it serves you little to hear me if you can’t defend yourself properly.”

Ping drops to the ground and rotates quickly with one straightened leg that hits him behind the ankles without accomplishing much.

“You should have aimed for the back of my knees then maybe you could have made me fall,” Shang admonishes him, and Ping nods once and sits on the grass with a vague, inviting gesture of his hand towards him that reminds Shang of the way his mother used to invite his father to sit on the table to take tea.

“Please, sit.”

He frowns. “You are a weird man, Ping.”

The sun is slowly coming down and the light begins to dim enough to make the contourn of shapes slightly undefinited and blurred.

“You haven’t gone with your friends,” he states the obvious, curious to find out if he will correct him, tell him that they are not his friends even though he has seen Ping along with Yao, Ling and Chieng-Po together all around camp, like peas in a pod.

“They have gone to the brothel.”

“Oh.” Shang looks at the river, suddenly too aware of the limits of his own skin, to all the air, and all the cloth, and all the leather that is in contact with it. “And you don’t visit brothels I take?”

Ping shrugs. When his shoulders slump again Shang wonders if his neck has always been this long and thin.

“I don’t like what they sell.”

The sentiment is so relatable that he can only repeat his words with pointed intent. “I don’t like what they sell either.”

There is a fluttering feeling inside him that makes him slightly anxious as the memories of nights playing mahjong and drinking baijiu pile up. Could it be possible that this man, so well-mannered as ill-trained for combat, could be a kindred spirit? That sweet, small Ping, would have more in common with him than any other man he has ever encounter?

Shang looks at the silhouette of distant mountains that reminds him of the house where he grew up, to a family than oftentimes left him more battered than a battlefield.

“Do you have any sisters, Ping?”

It takes him a couple of seconds to say anything but when he does, there is a melancholic sadness in his voice that tells him that Ping’s sisters, if they exist, could never be anything like his own.

“My father has a daughter.”

“Does she play mahjong?”

Ping smiles brightly. The obvious regard for his family reflected in his face is heartwarming and mesmerizing to watch.

“Father taught her as he taught me.”

“Maybe I could win _her_.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head and laughing a little, in a mix of demureness and open mirth that Shang can’t quite put a name to. “I don’t think you could.”

“I have five sisters. I don’t know if any of them ever learned to play mahjong.” He is surprised to find that there is no longer resentment attached to the memory of his sisters but merely indifference. He has thought that he knew all there was to know about the basics of women, but Ping’s sister could be as different of what was expected as his brother is. “ What is her name? Your father’s daughter?”

“Mulan.”

“Mulan. Fa Mulan.” He plays the name in his mouth. It sounds artless enough. “I think I’d like to meet her. Maybe at your vigil, after you die in battle for not learning all I’m trying to teach you.”

Ping looks at him, his ching high up in the air with a dignified and challenging gesture. “Then you’ll never meet her, Captain.”

* * *

 

 

Mulan can barely believe she is almost twenty one and that whole twelve months has gone by since she came to the camp for the first time. There is tension in the air and they breath it everyday as they get prepared to part. Men laugh a little less, conversations always seem to be had in ushered tones these days, and the sky seems grayer with every passing day.

Word has come that the Huns are almost at the gates of the Great Wall and soon, all regiments will be called into battle. There is a terrifying excitement that runs in their collective veins every time a messenger is seen entering the Captain’s tent.

“It is late, if you are going to be late you could at least let me know so I don’t get sick with worry,” Mushu says, with an admonishing look as he pads the limited wade of the tent, dressed with a cute, little apron that Mulan has no idea how he has procured.

“I’m sorry. Yao wanted my help to write to his fiance and he is really bad at it.”

Cricket chirps and Mushu crosses his upper paws in front of his chest. “Yeah, it sounds suspicious to me too, Bug. Are you sure you weren’t with Captain Shang? Again?”

Mulan stops and stares for a second before putting to the task of changing clothes and getting ready for bed.

“What does that mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You tell me, young woman.”

She gets her man’s shirt off, and her pants, and takes a satisfying look at her body. The bandages that cover her modest chest are no longer as uncomfortable as they were once and they allow her to move more freely when training for combat. Her tights and calves are thicker, her arms toned with visible muscles and her flat stomach is rock solid when she works her abs. If she is far less feminine than she was a year ago, the gained strength and skills makes her feel empowered and capable, and more like herself than she ever felt before.

“There is nothing to tell, Mushu.”

“Of course there is. It seems like you spend a whole lot of time with that Captain of yours. All that personal training and game playing.” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. “At his tent. After dark. I think there is definitely something to tell there.”

She puts on her sleeping clothes quickly as the little dragon walks around her feet. “He thinks that I’m a man,” she says dismissively.

“And what does _that_ has to do with anything?”

Mulan blinks once. Twice. There is the sketch of a thought of something she didn’t even contemplate as possible beginning to take shape in her mind before she shakes it off.

“Actually, he asks about my sister a lot.”

“Your sister?” Mushu seems rather unimpressed. “Do you mean _Mulan_ ? Who happens to share all your charming quirks and unique personality that he seems to have come to like so much, because, oh right, YOU ARE MULAN? You mean _that_ sister?”

She is blushing now, which is completely ridiculous, but Mulan can feel her cheeks heating up and so she gets into her sleeping bag and covers her whole self up to her forehead, like the mature, grown up she is.

“He is my captain,” she says in a low voice, fearful of what her words could reveal without her conscious knowledge.

“Yes. And the Bug here, you and I, all know how you look at him when he is training without a shirt on, not that anybody could blame you. Not to mention that time we almost stumbled upon him when he was bathing in the river and—”

“Hush, Mushu!” she says nervously. “There is no point in talking nonsense.”

Mushu seems to take offence, given his mumbling and puffing, but he lets the conversation rest and turns off the lamp.

The darkness is welcomed but she is restless and can’t sleep.

Whatever will happen when the Huns finally arrive, the feeble status quo she has built for herself in the last year will crumble into pieces. Death doesn’t scare her as much as coming back home only to find that her family has repudiated and forgotten her, or that Grandma has passed away without giving her one last blessing. If she gets discovered or scarred, marriage will be completely out of the table for her, and yet the prospect of Captain Shang denying their friendship is what makes her the most anxious and unsettled.

When she finally manages to drift off to sleep, her last coherent thoughts are for him. Will she ever be able to find a husband that respects her as Shang respects Ping? Will she be able to respect her husband back if he is anything less than a friend to her?

That night she dreams of the solid muscles of his chest pressing against her back as it happens sometimes when they are training for combat, but with far less clothes involved. She can feel the warmth of his skin on her own and the salty smell of his sweat. In the morning when she wakes up, she pretends like she can't remember it at all, just like she has done before.

When the dreaded scroll arrives they are all unprepared for the reality of war. They barely collect the bare necessities and run toward the mountains, the only sound that follows them is their own ragging breaths and the sound of their own horses hitting the road.

They stop for the night seeking refuge from the freezing wind at the shelter of a little valley and they melt snow to give water to drink to the horses and for Chieng-Po to make soup. Yao and Ling are uncharacteristically quiet while they eat and all her attempts to cheer them up are either unnoticed or unsuccessful.

There is fearful solemnity in the air.

Mulan pours some soup in a bowl and goes to the Captain’s tent for a lack of a better thing to do.

“I brought you some dinner,” she announces, after saluting him respectfully, the steaming bowl of soup in her hands.

He is slumped over a table with a map unrolled on it. The lines of his silhouette look straighter than usual as the fire of the candle plays on his features, making them look hard and unreal.

Mulan’s heart skips a beat when he turns to look at her and sees his face soften around the eyes.

“Thank you, Ping.”

His voice is soft, softer than she has ever heard before. He takes a couple of steps and takes the bowl from her hands, his fingers over his for one, two, three seconds as he stares at her eyes. No, beyond her eyes. At her own soul if such a thing exists.

She withdraws her hands but she can still feel his skin on them, like they have been branded for life.

In that very moment, Mulan realizes that any hope she ever had for a happy outcome to her transgressions is forever lost. No one would ever look at Mulan as they look at Ping and she doesn’t know if she will be able to bear it.

* * *

 

 

A month away from his twenty fourth birthday, Li Shang is officially named General of the army of China, one of the youngest to ever exists.

He is given honors, means of living that are well above comfortable and granted a leave to travel safely all around the country just as long as he makes himself available anytime the Emperor requires of him.

He travels all the way to the Li Estate to present his older brother with their late father’s helmet. It weighs too much in his saddlebag and maybe once it rest with their ancestors the pressure he feels low in his stomach will disappear.

His mother comes to him with a tense expression that vaguely resembles a smile. “You are your father’s son,” she says as if it is as much a compliment as a reproach.

He walks around the hallways and rooms that were part of his childhood but there are not any warm feelings attached to the memories. His sisters have all been married off since he left, and his older brother is now married to a woman that Shang couldn’t pick apart from their mother if the former wasn’t way younger than her, and most obviously pregnant with her second child.

“Your older brother already has a son that will carry the family name and guard the family estate. You are free to forget about us now and love only China, as your father always did.”

The snide remarks of his mother don’t hurt him anymore. He made his peace a long time ago with the fact that he wasn’t as loved as his older brother or as skilled in the cunning art of feigning affection as his sisters were. Instead, he gets on his horse feeling lighter than ever before, freer, and before he knows were he is going he is halfway along the way to the Fa Estate.

He pays his respects to Fa Zhou awkwardly. He hasn’t trained for this kind of social occasions, so far from military etiquette, and he seems himself act embarrassingly clumsy, tripping all over his words.

Mulan smiles at him and invites him to tea.

She is calm and agreeable, exactly as Ping was all those times they played mahjong in his tent at night. She pours the tea with efficient movements that lack the artifice that is considered feminine by society. It is beautiful to his eyes.

Mulan suggests a little walk to show him the garden and they both remain still as statues, waiting for her father's approval.

“For Heaven’s sake,” says Grandmother Fa with an exasperated gesture. “They have been _in the army_ together.” She wiggles her eyebrows and Shang can feel the heat rising up to his cheeks and colouring his whole face.

They walk slowly, in silent companionship until they reach the south end of the garden, where the almond and cherry trees are arranged beautifully.

“Thank you for bringing back my helmet,” she says, “and for staying for tea.” He nods. Once. “And I wanted to ask forgiveness for deceiving you.”

He looks away. It broke his heart when he found out that Ping had lied to him. That _Mulan_ had lied to him.

She puts her hand on his arm, softly, and he turns to look back at her. She is pretty, and if her hands are calloused, her skin tanned and her arms muscular under her long sleeves, he doesn’t find that any of those things belittle her beauty.

“There was a time when we were friends,” she says.

Yes, and he misses his friend so much that it made him ride half across China to the Fa Estate, even when custom demands that he shouldn’t want to.

“A man and a woman can’t be friends.” It is simply not allowed, no matter how much they could argue to the contrary.

She grabs his arm with a little more strength, there is a glint of anguish in her eyes and he knows that she has mistaken his meaning.

“And yet we were friends. Not man and woman, not Ping and Shang, not captain and soldier but you and I.”

“Yes.”

She smiles so wide that Shang can’t help but to smile too. He never thought he was suited to share his life with another person but he knows know that he wants his friend back, his mahjong partner, the person he told his secrets while drinking baiju. He wants her hand on his arm and the warmth that spread whenever their hands touched like that night in the snowed valley, just before the Hun’s attack.

“Marry me,” he says in the spur of the moment. “Please,” he adds, because he doesn’t want her to mistake his request for an order.”

“What?”

“I think we would be a good match.” He knows that. She is the only woman he could ever contemplate marrying. The only man who was a true friend to him too. “If you agree I will make a proper offer to your family. Unless—”

“Unless?”

“Unless you want to keep being a man,” his voice doesn’t quiver once even if they are unconventional words. They could still be friends then, companions, but they could not marry.

Mulan takes a deep breath. “I only want to be me.”

Shang smiles and takes her hand in his. He would like to put his arms around her, maybe even kiss her, but the lack of propriety would be unforgivable, so instead he just says, “Good,” and goes to speak with her father.

* * *

 

 

Against all odds Mulan is to become a married woman before reaching the age of twenty three. It is not her only accomplishment, she is one of the youngest counselors for the Emperor, the only one that it is not a man. She has a permit to travel alone by horse, can recruit new soldiers and her name is respected all around the imperial town.

She is also excused of the managing of her house in order to perform more important, more enjoyable tasks, like training with her until then fiance, in her custom clothes.

Their proposal has been a rather unusual one, with the involvement of the family of the groom and the matchmaker largely spared except to match their birthdates, a mere formality. The bride’s dowry is generously provided by the Emperor himself, and the wedding procession and the welcoming of the bride all done with minimum fuss within the Fa estate per wishes of both, the groom and the bride.

After both banquets, they are both led to their room for the night with sly smiles, and Mulan, in her fatuous red garment feels really nervous for the first time when the door closes, leaving the newlyweds alone for the night.

She takes her jewelry off, rubs off her makeup with almond oil and arranges her hair in a simple bun until she feels more like herself. When she looks up Shang is staring openly at her, his eyes dark and deep, transfixed. If she had a little experience under her belt she would easily identify his shallow breathing as lust.

“I—” he begins. She takes a couple of steps toward him, mesmerized by his intense eyes. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” she says breathlessly.

She feels a pull within herself that doesn’t know how to name, and when Shang puts his hands on the sides of her face and bends to put his lips on hers, her heartbeat drums in her ears like thunder. She pulls back, more surprised than scared that a kiss could feel like this.

Shang, takes a very slow breath and starts to take a step back.

“I’m sorry if I—”

“No!”

Mulan takes a hold on him by the arms and goes on tiptoes to kiss him again, her lips opening impatiently to him. She is eager to find out if there is more pleasing things to come.

Shang brings his hands to her hips and pulls her to him, their bodies crashing to each other and she is aware of two things at once: this is also a very pleasing new thing, the way the planes and hardness of his body feel flushed against her, and that he is so much bigger and heavier than her, even if she still could push him to the ground if she set her mind to it.

His hands start to move as he starts to nibble on her lower lip, up, up, little by little, conquering uncharted territory and Mulan has the sudden thought that her body might not be what he expects; harder than a woman’s body should be, full of planes and hard angles instead of pleasing feminine curves.

Her hands are still on his biceps and when Shang starts to open her hanfu she straightens her grip until he stops kissing her to look at her eyes.

“Do you want me to stop?”

No, she doesn’t want him to stop but she wants to understand. When he proposed to her she thought she understood. He wasn’t in love with her, but he thought they were a good match and that is the most important thing for a marriage after all.

But she sees the depth in his eyes when he looks back at her and wonders, feels the warmth of his body and the bold caresses of his hands and wonders.

Mulan raises her chin but looks at a distant point over his shoulder. She is nervous and insecure and trying not to feel as exposed as she is about to be.

“Do you see a man or a woman when you look at me?”

Shang takes her chin in his hand and forces her to look him back in the eye.

“Does it matter?”

It takes her breath away. She never knew this was the exact answer she wanted, she never knew this was a possible answer at all.

“You love me,” she says in a way that isn’t a question but demands for an answer nevertheless.

“For a long time now.”

She laughs with mirth and her eyes well up with joyful tears. Whatever she thought when she was growing up, she never thought she could be this happy.


End file.
